User:IJBall/Assessment

Background
Article assessment is the (informal) way that article quality (e.g. content, formatting, sourcing, etc.) is assessed on English Wikipedia: "The system is based on a letter scheme which reflects principally how factually complete the article is, though the content and language quality are also factors."

Issue
While the "high end" of article assessment classes (e.g. Featured articles, Good articles, even B-class articles) have well defined criteria, the "lower end" of article assessment classes, especially the differences between Start-class articles and C-class articles, are much less defined, to the point of being somewhat unclear.

Purpose
The purpose of this essay to to flesh out some of the more obvious difference among Stub class articles (which are actually pretty well defined by WP:Stub), Start-class articles, and C-class articles.

Note: The following are rough guidelines (i.e. suggestions) to follow, and are not meant to be "hard and fast rules":


 * Notes

Analysis
The two most basic criteria for assessing whether an article is at Start-class, or whether it has achieved C-class, are article length and extent of sourcing.

Article length
In very rough terms, a Start-class article will usually have only one or two separate primarily textual sections, in addition to the lede, while a C-class article is likely to have three (or more) separate textual sections – i.e. not including non-textual 'See also', 'References' and 'External links' sections (and also not including primarily list-based content sections, such as a Filmography section, which are found in many BLP's-type articles). Taking BLP's as an example, a Start-class article will have something along the lines of a 'Early/Personal life' section, and a 'Career' section, but no other substantial textual portions of the article besides the lede. A C-class BLP article will likely have more than just a 'Life' and 'Career' section, and may even see the 'Career' section itself divided into subsections (e.g. Film and Television subsections, to take a BLP actor article example). In addition, there will simply be more 'text' in a C-class article – while a Start-class article is longer than a "Stub", they're usually not much longer; a C-class article, by contrast, is noticeably longer than any regular "Stub" article.

Sourcing
Extent of sourcing may be the even more important dividing line between a Start-class article and a C-class article. There are a number of articles that have achieved "C-class length", but which should not be promoted to C-class, because they are insufficiently sourced (e.g. perhaps having only half-a-dozen references to solid reliable sources). A C-class article will be well sourced. The table above suggests at least a dozen references, but that is probably the bare minimum of acceptable sourcing for C-class, and most C-class articles will likely have closer to two dozen references to reliable sources, and possibly more. By contrast, regardless of article length, a Start-class article will struggle to have references to a dozen reliable sources, and will often have half that many. In general, possibly the quickest way to promote an article from Start-class to C-class is simply to continually hunt for sourcing until roughly two dozen reliable sources have been found – with that level of sourcing, the article will very probably have enough information content on its own to qualify for C-class.